Overnight Open Thread (8-4-2014)

Trivia Question of the Day: Can you arrange Hillary, Kerry, Warren, and Biden in order of ascending age? Answer here: Warren (65), Hillary (66), Kerry (70), Biden (71)

Glenn Reynolds: Is Obama Planning a Coup?

Overheard at an Argentinian Steakhouse

"I'm a vegetarian," she says, and you can see the waiter (at the Argentinian steakhouse) stiffen a bit. "So if you could make all the dishes fish or vegetables, that'd be wonderful." Confused-punch drunk, almost, at the audacity of the thing-the waiter stumbles away to consult with the chef. He comes back moments later with a compromise: They'll allow her to skip the chef's tasting menu if everyone else still wants to partake. It doesn't make any economic sense, you see, for her to do it this way. She'd be better off just ordering veggies individually.

Miffed, she dismisses the waiter again. How dare they make the vegetarian feel unwelcome at the "contemporary Argentine steakhouse"! "I just wish the chef would do his job!" is the last thing I hear the outraged woman say. Here's an artistic representation of what happened to me when she screeched that:

Depressing News: ISIS Advances as Kurds Run Out of Ammunition

Now, the Washington Post reports that ISIS has made its first significant inroads against the defenses of the overstretched Kurds. They have punched through to the northern town of Sinjar. Another town, Wana, has also fallen, leaving ISIS within striking distance of Mosul's hydroelectric dam, the largest in the country.

...The Obama administration, through State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, stated that the United States is "gravely concerned" by the displacement of civilians and the loss of life. What's next, a #SavetheShrines campaign

As someone pointed out a while back nearly every single Obama administration statement is simply an expression of feelings without any promise of action or consequences whatsoever.

Dennis Miller: "Netanyahu, who lost his brother at Entebbe, is going to go only so far and then he's going to put the big portobello over Iran and, guess what, like it or not we are going to have to back his play."

Also The Irrelevancy of Peaceful People

Halbig and Hammurabi

The power of a written and fixed set of laws.

Surely Hammurabi was not the first, but his code is our oldest example of the written law. Somewhere in the penumbras of pre-history, some long-forgotten Promethean genius did humankind a favor that surely ranks up there with the wheel and fire: the written law. It is a simple thing - "simple as a flower, and that's a complicated thing."

Hammurabi's law covers a great deal more than his take on "an eye for an eye," which was, like our own criminal laws, graded according to the status of the victim - a slave's eye was not worth what a prince's eye was. (You think we've evolved past that? Consult your local statutes regarding assault on a police officer, or on employees of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who are practically begging for a bit of battery.) The Hammurabic Code, along with its presumptive predecessors, represented something radical and new in human history. With the law written down - with the law fixed - a man who had committed no transgression no longer had reason to tremble before princes and potentates. If the driver of oxen had been paid his statutory wage, if a man's contractual obligations had been satisfied, and if his life was unsullied by violations of the law, handily carved upon slabs of igneous rock for all to see and ingest, then that man was, within the limits of his law, free.

Hammurabi never directed his secretary of health and human services to promulgate regulations subsidiary to the code and subject to near-term political necessities - just 282 laws and associated punishments, available for all to see.

On Downsizing the Army

This is penny wise and pound foolish. We will come to regret the loss of the most experienced members of our armed services. These are people, many of whom signed up after 9/11 who will be left jobless and without the pension guarantees if they had been allowed to reach 20 years of service. Yet, we cannot fire the incompetents who messed up the VA services for these same veterans.

Last Entry, August 4 1944

As I've told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn't give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I'm being completely honest, I'll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I'm trying very hard to change myself, but that I I'm always up against a more powerful enemy.

A voice within me is sobbing, "You see, that's what's become of you. You're surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people, who dislike you, and all because you don't listen to the advice of your own better half."

Believe me, I'd like to listen, but it doesn't work, because if I'm quiet and serious, everyone thinks I'm putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I'm not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can't keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside g out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if. if only there were no other people in the world.

Yours, Anne M. Frank

Just because you're a Native American tribe doesn't mean you're a nice tribe

But but evil white men!

The Navajo were so disdained that several neighboring Indian tribes joined in the U.S. mission to relocate them. Interestingly, PBS's series The West reveals this point: "When Utes, Pueblos, Hopis and Zunis, who for centuries had been prey to Navajo raiders, took advantage of their traditional enemy's weakness by following the Americans onto the warpath, the Navajo were unable to defend themselves."

Was the Doctor with AR at Phoenix Airport Was Falsely Accused of Muzzle Sweeping People?

It sure seems like it from the video. Not that open carrying a rifle at the airport is a particularly good idea but it appears that the guy didn't break any laws while he was there.

Worlds Dumbest Man Loses Life Savings On Carnival Game

He wanted to win an Xbox for his son. So he spent $2600 at a carnival game over two days and only ended up with a stuffed banana. Note that you can buy an Xbox 360 at Walmart for $180.

Professional Sex Toy Tester, $27,000

Five Hobbies For People Looking For Something Really Different

Jonathon the Tortoise Then and Now

 

The Yahoo AoSHQ group - it's got electrolytes.

And my twitter thang.

Tonight's post brought to you by monkey fist:

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posted by Maetenloch at 10:06 PM

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